BOOK REVIEW | DROWN DEEP | PHIL WILLIAMS

 BOOK DESCRIPTION

Where armies won't go, the Blood Scouts must…

 Wild Wish has reluctantly left the front line behind. No more fighting. No more friends. But she's about to get an invitation to a fight no one else dares touch.

 There's trouble in the Saints Mire, a strictly neutral land with deep religious history. Here, the secrets of the Prophets are preserved by the foreboding Ten Priories – isolated for centuries, steeped in myth, and now under attack.

 A rogue Drail army of veterans, criminals and goblins has invaded, and a reckless company of Comity partisans are itching to stop them. The top brass want nothing to do with it, so it's up to Wild Wish and her new band of ragged misfits to keep things from escalating.

 She must brave the heart of a nightmare land harbouring great, hidden power – and even greater hidden threats. Secrets millennia in the making may be exposed – with the potential to change the very shape of the war.

 But if Wish can find an opportunity to rebuild The Blood Scouts, maybe it'll be worth it?

 Drown Deep is a breakneck return to the Rocc and its epic global get ready for more heart-pumping action and enthralling characters from this unforgettably unsettling world.

520 pages, Kindle Edition

Expected publication October 22, 2024

REVIEW

Drown Deep is the second book in his Blood Scouts Series.

In Drown Deep, we meet up again with Wild Wish as she has moved into her new position as a rather bored training instructor. However, she is contacted by Four Skills who has a cunning plan to get the gang back together, travelling to Saints Mire on a recon mission.

Four Skills explains that the neutral Saints Mire has been infiltrated by the Drail and that the Comity need a crack squad to go in and see what the damage is, and by her reckoning, this would lead to any requests to reconvene the Blood Scouts without any question.

The only problem is that Wish would have to be joined by a new group of recruits and the inimitable Captain Brade.

I am sure that  I will do this book a great disservice in how good it actually is.

The story is set in a fantasy world that is engaged in a World War scenario. Whilst the book is set in this type of world, there are also strong epic fantasy tones mixed in.

As with the first book, the world that Phil Williams has developed is vivid and feels real and there are elements that seem familiar. There are all the things that you would expect in this type of story and yet they feel utterly alien.

In addition to this, the characters are all good, and it was great to see the relationship between Wish and Brade develop.

In Drown Deep. Phil Williams extends both the world and the setting with the inclusion of Saints Mire. It gives some background to the religions of the world in which the story is set and also give more insight into the Drail as a whole.

As you would expect, the book is pretty grim and gritty, yet Phil Williams manages to interject humour into the story, particularly when Wild Wish has to interact with the new recruits that she has with her on the mission, particularly the ogres who join the merry band.

I don’t know about anyone else that reads this book, but it doesn’t half put me in mind of Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe books (obviously set in a fantasy world and a completely different setting), which for me is no bad thing as I love Sharpe, and I am also loving Wild Wish and The Blood Scouts.

Drown Deep is a brilliant sequel to the first book and I cannot wait to see more adventures with Wild Wish and the Blood Scouts.